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Regional Oral History Office University of California

The Bancroft Library Berkeley, California

CALIFORNIA WOMEN IN BOTANY

Annetta Carter UC Herbarium Botanist, Collector and

Interpreter of Baja California Plants

Mary DeDecker Botanist and Conservationist of the

Inyo Region

Elizabeth McClintock California Academy of Sciences Curator,

Ornamental Plant Specialist

With Interview Introductions by Lincoln Constance, Betty Gilchrist, Peter Rowlands, John Hunter Thomas

Interviews Conducted by Carol Holleuffer 1985

This manuscript is made available for research purposes. No part of the manuscript may be quoted for publication without the written permission of the Director of The Bancroft Library of the University of California at Berkeley.

Requests for permission to quote for publication should be addressed to the Regional Oral History Office, 486 Library, and should include identification of the specific passages to be quoted, anticipated use of the passages, and identification of the user.

It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows:

To cite the volume: California Women in Botany, an oral history conducted in 1985, Regional Oral History Office, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, 1987.

To cite individual interview: Annetta Carter, "UC Herbarium Botanist, Collector and Interpreter of Baja California Plants," an oral history conducted 1985 by Carol Holleuffer, in California Women in Botany, Regional Oral History Office, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, 1987.

Copy No. /|

THE DAILY CALIFORNIAN May 17, 1991

• . -,<£. . ' •TVjW'-wiKjs

^UC'Berkeleyl 'botanist dies

W-!

Annetta Marjf Carter, a prominent at,UC,B«t;keley's Herbariuni, WedneSdi)> at the age of 83, following a long battle with cancer.! Carter, frhb Worked a^the Herb- , arium for nibre thaH 6b)(ears, was recognized internationally as art expert on the flora of Baja California. | •* « During her tenurf BS principal "J botanist, and after her 'retirement in rL'1%8, she conducted extensive research on plant life around California and in .^jiorthernJMexko. . , ?

lv* Carter served "As president of the .^ California Botanical Society in 1967, I \irid wai a fhernber'df'the California Academy of Sciences and the inter- _ national Society_of_Wonten Geog raphers. ?n'»lr.-..<f. H':'»M .«> |

Her work in the Sierra de la Gigari- r- ta mountain range in Baja California , }( earned Carter honors from the Socie- 'B dad Botanica de Mexico.' She discov- (|(,ered several new' pjaht Species, 'many Ki,of which rjow,beaf:her name, | Ij. Carter is sufviyed by a nephew, ., Warren Carter;, two nieces, Margaret ,", Annetta .Carter Freeman and Mary ^Lou Carter Pbwellj a cousin, Grace Zoll; and her lifetime "companion

I

OAKLAND TRIBUNE May 16, 1991

Annetta Carter,

UC botanist

f '•• . I"— •••-: • ^.,.v X **\; ••-•':. -...••^..•"1

By Carol Brydolf

Tribunt fttft wriltr r-

. ("J :

f 'BERKELEY — Annetta Mary Cart-. er, Internationally known expert on the flora of Baja California and former prin cipal botanist at the UC-Berkeley her barium, died May 8 in Albany. She was 83. I, ..,

Ms. Carter, who was affiliated with the University Herbarium for 61 years, came to UC-Berkeley to study botany in1 1928. She began her long association with the herbarium during her senior year when she worked as a plant mounter9 there, ,' f /

She made over 5,000 collections from Baja California, described several new- species and boasted numerous plant spe cies and genera named after her by other

botanists... ,v,; -•,••• . .^;,<-,^r

Ms. Carter was born in 1907 and

raised in Sierra Madre, a small town in

Southern California that her grandfather

Nathanial C. Carter founded in 1882. She

graduated from UC-Berkeley in 1930 and

received her master's degree in botany

'in 1932, -.,',. t ' ' v:.»iY-y T7*

H; She is survived by a nephew.'Warren '

.Carter of , Oak Harbor, Wash.f nieces

'Margaret Annetta Carter Freeman of

Huntington Beach and Mary Lou Carter

>Powell of Alhambra and her lifetime

companion, Florence Mabel Little,

*•'•.• • ' • ' , •

Donations can be made to the Califor nia Botanical Society, to be used to es tablish a fund in Ms. Carter's memory for supporting field work in Baja Califor

nia. , .e» r ;, ^Av.>.:'. b

CAROL HOLLEUFFER 1945 - 1985

On behalf of future scholars, the Regional Oral History Office wishes to thank those who have made possible the completion of the California Women in Botany series. Donors to the project are listed below:

Bristlecone Chapter of the California Native Plant Society

The California Academy of Sciences

In memory of Carol Holleuffer: Annetta Carter Mary DeDecker Jack Easby

J.E. and Mary M. Hopkins Charles K. and Vera M. Holleuffer

PREFACE

Traditionally, women have been associated with the study of plants and flowers. When other scientific pursuits were considered too masculine for women to undertake, botany was the one science open to them: "...the objects of its investigation are beautiful and delicate; its pursuits, leading to exercise in the open air, are conducive to health and cheerfulness" (Familiar Lectures in Botany, 1845) . In this traditional view, then, botany was the perfect pastime for the "weaker sex."

In fact, women botanists have been strong characters capable of going alone for months in remote areas, subject to disease and hardships that would have defeated most men. They have taken on government agencies to protect endangered flora. They have done the meticulous, dedicated, and sometimes thankless work of keeping herbaria collections. Seldom have they received sufficient recognition, and often they have done their work for little or no pay. The California Women in Botany project was conceived of to tell their stories.

The women selected as the first interviewees in the series are well-suited to illustrate the varied accomplishments of women botanists. The vivid tales of Annetta Carter about her first collecting trip to Baja California with the eighty-year-old Annie Alexander attest to the hardships, and the joys, of life in the field. Mary DeDecker's recounting of her battles to protect the fragile habitat of her beloved desert plants reflects great strength of purpose and fearless, informed persistence. And Elizabeth McClintock's dedicated work for the California Academy of Science herbarium is yet a third aspect of the many contributions of California women botanists.

This series of interviews was conceived of, planned, and executed by Carol Holleuffer, herself a remarkable woman. Carol was a nature lover, a photographer, a conservationist. She combined these interests with a rapport with people of every age and circumstance, a sense of dedicated service, and an adventuresome zest for life that few can match. Tragically inflicted with serious illness in her young adulthood, Carol continued to live life to the fullest and to pursue activities which made a difference.

When diminishing eyesight impinged on her photographic work, she turned to the field of oral history as a means of documenting the world of people in nature. In her characteristic manner, she made sure that she was well-trained in the techniques of oral history interviewing before setting out with her tape recorder. She first worked with the Sierra Club History Committee, conducting two significant oral history interviews of prominent conservationists. Next, she conceived of the idea for a series of interviews with outstanding women botanists, a project which incorporated many of her interests and concerns.

She worked with the Regional Oral History Office to plan the Women in Botany series and to raise funds for processing the tape recorded interviews. Her own work as project director and interviewer was on a volunteer basis. The

ii

three interviews represented in this volume were only the first step in the projected series. Unfortunately, Carol's work was cut short when she succumbed to her illness in July 1985.

The interviews have been completed by the Regional Oral History Office, with generous contributions from friends and family of Carol and from the California Academy of Science and the Bristlecone Chapter of the California Native Plant Society. All of us whose lives were touched by Carol Holleuffer — and we believe that the interviewees represented here would include themselves in this group — hope that this volume of California Women in Botany will serve as a fitting memorial to her.

Ann Lage Interviewer /Editor

January 14, 1987 Regional Oral History Office 486 The Bancroft Library University of California, Berkeley

Regional Oral History Office University of California

The Bancroft Library Berkeley, California

Women in Botany Project

Annetta Carter

UC HERBARIUM BOTANIST, COLLECTOR AND INTERPRETER OF BAJA CALIFORNIA PLANTS

With an Introduction by Lincoln Constance

An Interview Conducted by

Carol Holleuffer

in 1985

Copyright (V) 1987 by The Regents of the University of California

Annetta Carter, 22 April 1955. Canon de las Palmas , west side of Cerro Giganta, Baja California Sur, trip with Roxana Ferres and Howard Gulick. Photograph by Howard Guliak.

Annetta Carter, Jesus Arias, and Adolfo Garayzar returning from climb of the Cerro Giganta, 26 November 1947. Photograph by Annie M. Alexander.

TABLE OF CONTENTS — Annetta Carter

INTRODUCTION by Lincoln Constance i

INTERVIEW HISTORY iii

BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION iv

I FAMILY BACKGROUND AND EARLY EXPOSURE TO ECOLOGY 1

Parents' Interest in Outdoors 1

Women Teachers as Role Models 3

II UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA DEPARTMENT OF BOTANY AND HERBARIUM 5

Botany Faculty. Staff, and Students 5

Guidance and Support of William Albert Setchell 9

Lecturing and Research Style of Willis Linn Jepson 11

III UC HERBARIUM COLLECTIONS AND RELATED WORK 13

William Brewer Collection 13

Tovnsend and Katherine Brandegee Collection 14

Purchase Method of Building Collections 16

Harley Bartlett Collection at the University of Michigan 17

Field Trips for Herbarium Exchange Program 19

Editing and Public Information Activities 20

IV BAJA CALIFORNIA FIELD TRIPS WITH ALEXANDER AND KELLOGG 27

Annie Alexander, Participant Scientist and Sponsor 27

Materials, Provisions, and Language Preparedness 30

Trip Log — Traveling. Collecting and Camping Experiences 32

Discovery of Acacia Kelloggiana 36

Adventures of Three Women Without Fear 38

Thoughts on Beauty of Plants and Sites in Baja California 46

New Species Discovered by or Named after Carter 48

V MORE ADVENTURING AND COLLECTING IN BAJA CALIFORNIA 50

La Paz and The Working Methods of Joseph Wood Krutch 50

Cooperation with Mexican Botanists 51

Field Trips with Roxana Ferris 52

Physical Injuries Sustained in Field 55

Interest in Editing and Letterpress Printing 57

International Botanical Congresses 59

Thoughts on Collecting as a Lifework and the Value of Herbariums 61

TAPE GUIDE 63

APPENDIX A - Madrono Dedication. 1966 64

APPENDIX B - Vita 65

APPENDIX C - Baja California — Related Publications 66

INDEX 68

INTRODUCTION

Annetta Carter was born in the small town of Sierra Madre in pre- metropolitan Los Angeles County in the first decade of this century. Much of her childhood and early youth were spent out of doors in the then-unpolluted and justly famous sunshine of southern California, where she early developed her lifelong interests in natural history, especially plants. These interests, encouraged by family and teachers at Pasadena and elsewhere, led her to Berkeley, where she received a baccalaureate in botany in 1930. Supported by a teaching ass 1st ant ship, she was enabled to pursue graduate work for two years, securing a Master of Arts degree with a thesis on the aquatic liverwort, Riccia fluitans.

Beginning in the early 1930s, she was gradually absorbed into the staff of the University Herbarium, which she essentially managed for several decades until she chose voluntary retirement from the rank of principal herbarium botanist in 1968. For twenty years (1943-1963) she served as secretary of the editorial board of Madrono, the quarterly publication of the California Botanical Society, which emanated from the herbarium. Herbert Mason, who served both as director of the herbarium and editor-in-chief of Madrono, was a scientist of many original ideas and successive enthusiasms, but with little zest for putting his ideas into publishable form. So Annetta not only served as the person who had major responsibility for seeing Madrono through the press but also the one — sometimes with the assistance of Ethel Crum and Dr. Helen M. Sharsmith — who transformed Mason's rough drafts into skillfully crafted publications.

Appropriately, the eighteenth (1966) volume of Madrono is dedicated to her with a text that reads in part: "...during three administrations the leavening spirit of the University of California Herbarium ... the trusted advisor of faculty and administrative officers, a generous counselor and confidante of successive generations of grateful students, and an esteemed friend to ... associates and herbarium visitors." These descriptions provide only an inadequate clue to the important roles she played and to the hospitable atmosphere she managed to sustain.

The Associates in Tropical Biogeography in February 19A7 sponsored an exploratory multi-disciplinary field trip the length of Baja California. The participants were Carl 0. Sauer, geographer, Howel Williams, geologist. R. A. Stirton. vertebrate paleontologist, three graduate students, and myself, as botanist. The accounts of our findings and adventures as well as earlier ones by staff and graduate students of the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, evidently stimulated the interest of Annie M. Alexander, who had already added botany to her long-established enthusiasms for field work in vertebrate paleontology and zoology. In November of 1947, she invited Annetta to accompany her and her companion, Louise Kellogg, on a three-month field trip to Baja California.

In Annette's words, this was "an expedition that changed the course of my life." Indeed, it marked her entry into the sphere of Mexican botany, in which she has played an outstanding role ever since.

Ira Wiggins, in tracing the history of botanical exploration in Baja California from the 18th century to 1980, states that, "There are two, however, who have been outstanding for having devoted much time and tremendous energy to penetrating areas very difficult of access to pry out information about the flora of Baja California's inhospitable environment. The first is Miss Annetta Carter, who has made scores of trips into the high, jagged parts of the Sierra de la Giganta behind Loreto. into the Cape Region, and to many of the islands along the peninsula shores. She still returns to the Sierra de la Giganta far more often than anyone else I know, and always finds something of intense interest." Two items of intense interest bear her name, the genera Carterothamnus Robinson of the Compositae and Carterella Terrell, the latter an appropriate elevation to generic status of the handsome Bouvardia alexanderae, which Annetta had proposed in 1955.

Part of her field work was supported by the Belvedere Scientific Fund of the Academy of Sciences, of which she was elected a Fellow in the 1950s, and for which she has led several members' field trips in recent years. She served as president of the California Botanical Society in 1965, and she remains an active member of the Biosystematics. Since her retirement, she has enjoyed honorary status as research associate in the University, and is continuing to extend the list of a dozen or so of her publications on Baja California. If her trips by mule into the Sierra de la Giganta are somewhat curtailed these days, her excursions into the study of the materials she collected there over the years show no sign of diminishing. Vaya adelantel

Lincoln Constance

Professor of Botany Emeritus

University of California

6 November 1986 University of California Berkeley, CA 94720

iii

INTERVIEW HISTORY

Annetta Carter was interviewed by Carol Holleuffer on March 19, 1985, and March 25, 1985. The interview was conducted in the library of the University of California Herbarium, where Ms. Carter has worked for over half a century as student assistant, botanist, administrator, and research associate. Interviewer and interviewee, both outgoing and helpful people with mutual interests in Baja California, quickly developed a close rapport which is evident in the tone and quality of this interview.

Ms. Carter has assisted the California Women in Botany Project immeasurably, not only by sharing her own experiences but also by advising Carol as she planned the project and later applying her editing skills to her own and Mary DeDecker's interview transcripts. She has provided this office with helpful suggestions at every stage of the final processing.

This interview was lightly edited for clarity and accuracy; tapes are on deposit in The Bancroft Library.

Ann Lage Interviewer-Editor

12 January 1987

Regional Oral History Office

486 The Bancroft Library

University of California at Berkeley

Regional Oral History Office Room 486 The Bancroft Library

University of California Berkeley, California 94720

iv

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I FAMILY BACKGROUND AND EARLY EXPOSURE TO ECOLOGY [Interview 1: March 19. 1985] *#

Parents ' Interest in Outdoors

Holleuffer: It's March 19th, 1985. I'm with Annetta Carter, research

associate of the University Herbarium. We're in the University Herbarium Library, a very small room filled with books and rather stuffy in the Life Sciences Building on UC [University of California, Berkeley] campus.

I wanted to start at the very beginning with you, Annetta. and ask where you were born.

Carter: Where I was born? I was born in Sierra Madre. Los Angeles

County, California, a little foothill community that was started by my grandfather. Nathaniel C. Carter, in 1882 when he purchased from Lucky Baldwin and from the government quite a bit of acreage which he later subdivided. He ran excursion trains out from Massachusetts. He was sort of a beginning chamber-of-commerce guy. [laughs]

Holleuffer: You mean to settle?

Carter: To settle, yes. I've seen pictures of a train with "Carter Excursions" on it. Anyway, he was able to start this town.

ff This symbol indicates that a tape or segment of a tape has begun or ended. For a guide to the tapes see page 63.

Holieuffer: Where did he get his money?

Carter:

I don't know where; he didn't have very much and land was very cheap then. He had an agency for a Weed sewing machine in Massachusetts, and then. I think, he started a little sewing business that made the first sewing-machine-made American flags. I don't know that he had much money.

Holieuffer:

Carter:

Land was just cheap.

Yes, land was cheap, owned it, I think.

It remained cheap as long as any of us [laughs] Never made a million off of it.

Holieuffer: Your family still has property there?

Carter: No, the last is sold now. My brother had the last and he had a little bit that he subdivided, but it's all gone now. I can still find the house that I was born in, though. Now, instead of having seven acres of nice chaparral around it, there are about a dozen houses on that seven acres. Not the way it was when I was little.

Holieuffer: Well, when you grew up you had lots of country around you.

Carter: Plenty of country around me. My family was very outdoor- oriented, and I had the run of the place. I could go anywhere I wanted. I think I must of even had an early feeling about ecology, because my father and I were looking at a little spot where he had burned brush in the winter when it was wet with rains, and that was the only place where a plant called whispering bells came up, right on that burned area. It was KmmonflTit-hg penduliflora in the Hydrophyllaceae. I've learned later that it's one of the things that's fire responsive; I mean the seeds have to be heat-treated. There was a Ph.D. thesis by Robert Sweeney, later a professor at San Francisco State University, on the effects of fire on chaparral. So I had this early feeling about ecology.

I think I made a grammar school collection of the local plants and illustrated it with a drawing, even a colored drawing, of the Dodecatheon, a shooting star. So I was interested early.

Holieuffer: Was anyone else in your family interested?

Carter: Oh, both my parents were. They were interested in the outdoors. I don't think my brothers evidenced much interest in plants, but they enjoyed the outdoors. My father would sometimes be a summer fire guard back in the San Gabriel Mountains, and we'd go back into the mountains for part of the summer when I was little.

When I was about four, my father and mother took me on an animal trip clear across the San Gabriel Mountains from Sierra Madre to the Mojave Desert. I think we must have been gone three weeks or more on that animal trip.

Holleuffer: By an animal trip you mean you took burros?

Carter: My first burro experience, yes. [laughs] I'm quite sure they were burros, not mules. I have a picture of me on one of them, on a burro. I have a picture of me. on the Mojave Desert sitting in our little campsite, with very chapped lips. I could hardly grin my lips were so chapped.

Women Teachers as Role Models

Holleuffer:

Carter:

What other influences did you have in your early years? there schoolteachers who were interested in botany?

Were

In high school. Pasadena High School. I had the very good fortune of a biology teacher who was a very good teacher and interested in the out-of-doors. I had her as a freshman in high school. I think. Then as a junior in high school I had a botany teacher — at that time they taught botany as a separate course. The biology teacher was Ada Neal. later Ada Neal Burns, who later was on the staff of the American Museum of Natural History in New York. The botany teacher was Ruth Merrill, later Ruth Earl Merrill Jenkinson. She went to India as a teaching missionary the year I graduated from high school, and later she married another missionary, an Englishman. They eventually came to the United States to live and raise their family.

All these teachers really were a big influence on me. They took an interest in me and they became friends. I think they were partly interested because my mother died when I was eleven and I hadn't had much exposure to women; they really meant a great deal to me. So I think that they were my first role models .

Then in junior college. Pasadena Junior College, I had two people, Florence Brubaker and Margaret Stason. who were both graduates of UC Berkeley. They also encouraged me. and I worked for Margaret Stason as a lab assistant after I'd had botany with Florence Brubaker.

All of them remained friends the rest of their lives. Margaret Stason who is in her eighties now. is still alive and

went on a Baja California field trip that I led while she was, oh, probably eighty-one or eighty-two.

Holleuffer: So the student became the teacher.

Carter:

Well, more or less.

Holleuffer: It sounds unusual to me to have had all these women who had advanced degrees and were teaching at that time.

Carter: None of them had more than a master's degree. At that time you

didn't have to have a Ph.D. to teach in junior college. But both Margaret Stason and Florence Brubaker had master's degrees that they had gotten here from Berkeley. When I came here they both either told me people I should get to know — maybe even gave me letters of introduction, I don't remember — so I had sort of a bridge from junior college to here.

The summer after I'd had Florence Brubaker in her botany course, she was going to UCLA for the summer and encouraged me to go too. I had the good luck to share an apartment with her that summer which was a nice experience for me.

Holleuffer: What age were you then, about eighteen?

Carter: Probably. Let's see, probably eighteen, yes. Eighteen, nineteen. I'd have to do the arithmetic.

II UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA DEPARTMENT OF BOTANY AND HERBARIUM

Botany Faculty, Staff, and Students

Holleuffer: And then you came to Berkeley in what year?

Carter: I graduated from junior college in 1928, came here in the fall of '28. Graduated in '30 and then stayed on and got my master's degree here.

Holleuffer: When you came up to Berkeley how many people were there in your botany class?

Carter: In the senior class at Berkeley there were eight women, no

fellows at all. No men. There were men in graduate school, two or three, but in the graduating senior class were eight women.

Holleuffer: Were the teachers then women too?

Carter: No, the only woman on the staff was Lucile Mason. [interruption] There were no women on the Department of Botany staff except Lucile Roush Mason, then Lucile Roush, who was in charge of the freshmen botany labs and was Dr. Richard Holman's right-hand assistant. She should have been an academic professor but at that time there weren't any on the staff. She did get her Ph.D. later and still maintained the position of being in charge of all the freshmen laboratories.

Holleuffer: But she never had a tenured position?

Carter: No. Then later she and Herbert Mason were married and at that time you weren't supposed to have two in the same family on the staff. So there couldn't be two academic people. She later taught at Mills College for a while before she retired. A grand teacher and a good friend to all the students.

Holleuffer:

Carter:

Did you keep up with your fellow students from that time? Do you know what happened to them?

I know one, Dorothy Tebbe, became a doctor. I kept up with very few of them except Mary Bowerman with whom I'd been in junior college. We came up together and we've been friends ever since. One who worked in the herbarium with me and sort of introduced me to the herbarium work in addition to Mrs. Bracelin's introduction became a teacher [Vivian Giles Weatherhead] in the East Bay school system in El Cerrito. A very successful biology teacher. I still know her, but the others I've lost track of. I have a few ideas on where they are, but I haven't kept in touch.

Holleuffer: When you came up here to take botany what were your expectations of what you would do with the degree? What did you hope to accomplish?

Carter: Well, I expected to get a teaching credential and teach high

school and/or junior college. I got both credentials, but I got out at the height of the Depression in '32 and couldn't find any jobs. So, I'd been working in the herbarium and I kept on part- time work in the herbarium, and then gradually it increased to full-time work. I much preferred that to teaching because I wasn't really cut out for teaching. I'd had a miserable time in practice teaching.

Holleuffer: As a student you practiced —

Carter: As a grad student I had practice teaching, and it just about

killed me. I don't know how many pounds I lost that year, but it was a low period. Especially the second session, which was, I think, about a fourth level junior high general science class. It was just awful.

Holleuffer: The students were awful or what?

Carter: The students and trying to get the material across. I just

wasn't cut out for that. The fact that I was able to work into a position in the herbarium was really a godsend to me and became very satisfying.

Holleuffer: In your student years there was also an undergraduate club here, wasn't there, for people who were interested in botany, called the Calypso Club?

Carter: It was not only undergraduate but graduate too. The faculty also took an active part in it. I think that more graduate students went on trips than undergrade, although a few of us undergrads got to go along. There were weekend field trips in old cars with

good clearance as you saw from the pictures in the Calypso Club album. We'd all pile into two or three cars. The Masons had an old Dodge touring car that was wonderful. They'd even lend it to us sometimes without them being along. So we'd go off in the Mount Hamilton Range and North Coast ranges or Marin County and collect plants and just go and have a good time. Sit around the camp fire and sing.

Holleuffer: In the beginning here in the Calypso Club photo album is a description of a trip and the sign-up list, and it's three dollars and fifty cents for the trip. [flipping through it] It's very cheap. [laughter] Bring your own bedroll, that was all that was required.

Carter: We didn't have fancy sleeping bags in those days either. A

bedroll was more what it was. just blankets. I know mine was; the blankets covered by an old piece of canvas that I'd brought up from home. But they weren't light, so our gear wasn't light. And we had running boards in those days to tie things onto, which you don't have now.

Holleuffer: This was also an opportunity to start some field identification work?

Carter: Yes. Quite a lot of us were taking Herbert Mason's course in

plant taxonomy at that time, so it was an opportunity to do the collecting that one had to do for the course. Now collecting is frowned upon, but at that time it was part of the course to collect a certain number of specimens in different plant families and identify them correctly, label them, learn how to prepare good specimens. That's something that isn't done anymore because of, well, the crunch on the vegetation for one thing.

When I was an undergrad I didn't have much money so I was working part-time. The first year I was here as a junior I had a part-time job in the household science department under Agnes Fay Morgan cutting up prunes and other fruit for the dietary experiments on rats. It happened that in the house where I was living there was a young woman who was working for her doctorate in the household science department, and she got me this job.

Holleuffer: What were you paid for that?

Carter: It may have been twenty-five cents an hour. I know it wasn't as much as fifty cents; that was later in the herbarium.

Holleuffer: And all the prunes you could eat?

8

Carter: No. I wasn't very hungry for prunes somehow or other. [laughs] There may have been other fruit, but I remember especially the prunes and mixing some of their dietary mixes and things. I don't think I had to clean the cages much; I was spared that.

Holleuffer: What other jobs did you have as a student?

Carter: In my senior year Dr. Holman, professor of plant physiology,

suggested that I apply for a position in the herbarium where they needed a mounter. So I did and got the position. My first herbarium job was mounting plants, so I feel I can tell young mounters how it should be done. I went up to the herbarium to be interviewed and the herbarium at that time was on the top floor of the Hearst Mining Building clear at the other end of campus. Mrs. [N. Floy] Bracelin, who we called Bracie, was the one who interviewed me. Dr. [Edwin Bingham] Copeland was then curator of. the herbarium. He had turned the interviewing over to Mrs. Bracelin so we had a pleasant interview, and I was hired.

Holleuffer: Was she a trained botanist?

Carter: No she wasn't. She had gotten into botany through meeting Ynes Mexia on field trips (1926).

Holleuffer: With the Calypso Club maybe?

Carter: No, with Harold C. Bryant who was later director of natural history programs in the National Park Service. (At that time Bryant was lecturer and instructor in the UC Extension Division, 1916-1930, and much later superintendent of Grand Canyon National Park.)

Anyway, Harold Bryant was real important later in the National Park Service. He led these field trips. Mrs. Mexia was on those, and Mrs. Bracelin became acquainted with her. Mrs. Mexia was interested in going on field trips and thought that Bracie could help her take care of the material. So in that way she worked into botany. She would have been an excellent botanist — all around botanist — if she'd been able to have gone on to college and been trained, but she picked it up. a tremendous amount. She was a real good herbarium curator and very capable.

Dr. Copeland. after Bracie started working for Mrs. Mexia, put her on the herbarium staff to take some of the load off from him. That worked out very well for her for a number of years.

Holleuffer: You said something, too, about how she used to sing while she was working?

Carter: Yes, she was a very joyous person. I think maybe some of her

domestic troubles were covered up by being joyous at work. She had a lovely voice and would sing as she worked. You could hear her voice — when we moved to this building you could hear it through the herbarium. That irritated some of the staff, some of the academic staff.

Guidance and Support of William Albert Setchell

Holleuffer: I was wondering if you could describe some of the other departmental personalities other than Mrs. Bracelin?

Carter: Well. Dr. Copeland. who was curator of the herbarium, was quite a gruff man. He was a specialist on ferns. I got to know him later, but at that time, as a senior, 1 was quite intimidated by him. One day I was typing labels for his specimens — Brandegee labels they were — and I was typing along "JSB" (that's the way Brandegee1 B writing looked to me.) Dr. Copeland looked over my shoulder and said. "Any fool would know that was TSB." (Townsend Stith Brandegee, the most important early botanist to work in Baja California.) That really made me feel like going under the table. But later I followed in Brandegee 's footsteps in Baja California. Now I have his desk and his revolving bookcase as my own to use here.

I did my master's degree under William Albert Setchell. who'd been chairman of the department since he came to Berkeley from Yale and Harvard in 1895. He remained chairman until 193 A, which is a good long stint. He was a large man — not, well, just large all over and he had a booming voice. If you were at one end of the LSB [Life Sciences Building] hall and he was coming out of a room at the other end, and he just spoke naturally, it would boom down the whole hall. When you'd go to consult with him about a problem in your research he would lean back in his big chair. (He had quite a collection of pipes so he always had one pipe or another.) He would lean back and look at you. rather sternly, and then he'd blow big smoke rings that would — . I would follow these good old smoke rings going up the ceiling while he was talking or asking me questions.

He had married late. He had a wonderful wife who preceded him in death a few years, but we got to know her. They would go on extensive field trips, many of them to the South Pacific, and bring back collections. But he was also very fond of the students and had a group that he called his nieces and his nephews all over the world. Many of the students that he'd had.

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or professors in other countries, became his nieces and nephews. I had the good fortune to be a niece.

Holleuffer: Was this a formal title that you — did he address you this way?

Carter: No. were just considered — . He'd have gatherings of his nieces and nephews. I think he may have had an informal list of them. We knew we were his nieces and nephews because he'd have us in. Herbert and Lucile Mason were nephew and niece; Lincoln Constance and I, both being contemporaries, were nephew and niece, and botanists all over the world. There were two in New Zealand, both of whom I've met. You'd go to another part of the country, and you'd meet somebody who was a fellow niece or nephew. It was a wonderful relationship.

Holleuffer: Was he very supportive of you in your work?

Carter: Yes.

Holleuffer: Did he encourage you to go for a Ph.D.?

Carter: [pause] He didn't discourage me. but I think I discouraged

myself. I think I could have gone on, but I was scared with the possibility of a language exam in German, and I just didn't want to go on. [laughs]

Holleuffer: What languages did you have to have at that time? Carter: German and French. I didn't have French at all. Holleuffer: No Latin?

Carter: No. you didn't have to have Latin. Well. Spanish I wouldn't have wanted to use then. The other way that we knew we were nephews and nieces were that we called him "Uncle Bill". I went East — when was it? In 1933. He insisted that I go to visit his sisters in Providence. Rhode Island, so I went there on my way up to Harvard and stayed with them a couple of nights. That was a nice experience, so I came back and brought him news of his sisters and kept in contact with them until they passed on. He was one of the highlights of being a student here at that time.

There were other professors too. Professor [Nathaniel] Gardner, who was the other one working in algae, was a quiet man. a very gentle, quiet man; quite different from [William Albert] Setchell. with whom he collaborated on the very famous marine algae of the Pacific Coast, which really put this institution on the map as a leader in algological studies.

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Lecturing and Research Style of Willis Linn Jepson

Holleuffer: What about Willis Linn Jepson. who's been described as the paranoid personality of the herbarium? [laughing]

Carter: Well. I wasn't one of his students, but working in the herbarium and his having the need to consult the herbarium from time to time I got to know him informally. He was always very friendly with me. He could give the most beautiful, inspiring lectures, interesting lectures, but he was very much a recluse in his own office. If he didn't want to see a person he wouldn't see them. He had — well, perhaps Mrs. Dempster (Laura May Dempster, now a research associate in the Jepson Herbarium) will tell you that story when you talk to her — that he gave orders that he wasn't in unless he wanted to be. [chuckles] There is one story of Professor [Ralph] Chaney coming to see him. and Chaney was told that he wasn't in. Chaney didn't believe it, and he was peering through the keyhole and here was Jepson peering through the keyhole in the other direction. [laughter]

He felt that anything to do with the flora of California was his prerogative. No matter how he gained information about the plants of California it was his right to know because the flora of California was his. So anything he did to gain that information was all right in his eyes.

Holleuffer: So there were some underhanded things that went on.

Carter:

There were some underhanded things.

Holleuffer: Would you like to describe some of those?

Carter: I don't know that I should put it on record, but I was working on some Alexander and Kellogg collections from the Sweetwater Mountains. I had them all down on the basement floor, and they were spread out where I was working on them. There were some really interesting things. I was working there late one afternoon, and he came along as he usually did after hours. So I was showing him these interesting plants that they'd collected. When I finished with them, we sent the list to Miss Alexander, and she said, "Why I didn't collect this under that number." She had very careful notes and numbered all her collections. So we'd given her a name of something she said wasn't on that collection sheet. We looked at the specimens and discovered that that specimen had been removed and another one put in its place. Later those collections turned up in the Jepson Herbarium, which since then has been curated by Dr. Rimo Bacigalupi and L. R. Heckard. So he just came and helped himself to whatever he

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wanted. If there was not enough to split, why he transferred material. He kept the data all right, correct for himself, but he didn't care what was right in what remained because he had what he needed. My fingers were really burned by that experience.

Holleuffer: You didn't show him plants after that? Carter: I didn't show him any more plants, no.

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III UC HERBARIUM COLLECTIONS AND RELATED WORK

William Brewer Collection

Holleuffer: There was also something, as I recall, about the Brewer collection and Dr. Jepson?

Carter: Well, the Brewer collection was a collection of William Brewer,

who was on the